


Breakfast at Milliway's

by cptsdcarlosdevil



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sacrifices Arc
Genre: Gen, Milliways - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 15:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7273651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsdcarlosdevil/pseuds/cptsdcarlosdevil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Potter meets Harry Black from Sacrifices Arc at Milliways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakfast at Milliway's

Far away, at a bar between worlds--

Two men with identical messy black hair covering their identical lightning-bolt-shaped scars are looking at each other with identical green eyes.

“I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do now that I’ve defeated Voldemort,” Potter said. “I think I’m probably just going to become an Auror. It’s what I trained for, after all-- fighting dark witches and wizards.”

“You don’t have to do something just because you were trained for it,” Black said with a vehemence that seemed to surprise Potter.

“Well, what are you doing?”

“I’m a vates.” Potter looked blank. Either they didn’t have it in his world, or (more likely) he had seen no reason to pay attention to the beliefs of magical creatures. “I break the webs that enslave magical creatures like unicorns and house elves.”

“I don’t think the house elves would like that,” Potter said. “I mean, Dobby did, but he was very unusual. When Winky was freed, she was depressed.”

“In my world, the house elves’ desire to serve is also a product of the webs,” Black said. “When they’re free, they don’t want to serve wizards.”

“Huh,” Potter said. “That’s not how house elves work in my world.”

Black did not say ‘most wizards in my world don’t believe that’s how house elves work either’, but it was a close thing. If this Potter had been capable of walking the path of a vates, he had forsaken it long ago-- perhaps when he decided to see Albus Dumbledore as a mentor and Light Lord instead of a cruel manipulator of children. Besides, perhaps it really was different. The two worlds were divergent enough anyway. 

He had a reminder of that in Potter’s next words. “I feel strange about asking,” he said, “because I know it hurts to have someone asking you about people who died. But… what was it like to have a brother?”

Black smiled fondly. “Connor was a prat. Did I tell you that my second year he decided I was a Dark wizard?”

“No!” Potter said, fascinated.

“He accused me of it in front of the whole school,” Black said. “Because I was a Parseltongue, and because I beat him at Quidditch.” His voice was quiet. “He got better, though. I always wonder how he would have grown if he hadn’t...”

“I’m glad we don’t have Unassailable Curses in my universe,” Potter said fervently. “There was enough death already.”

“But he was wonderful, as a child,” Black said. “We used to race brooms with James--”

“You were raised by James and Lily?” Potter asked. 

“Yes?” Black said. “Who else would I be raised by?”

“The Dursleys,” Potter said. Black had to think for a moment before he remembered that was the name of his mother’s Muggle relatives. “That’s whom I was raised by. Voldemort killed my mum and dad before I reflected the Killing Curse back on him.”

“They didn’t hide while they were using you as bait?” Black asked.

“No?” Potter said. “They hid with us before they were betrayed by Peter Pettigrew.”

This universe’s Dumbledore, Black reflected, did not seem to have a particularly firm grasp of how prophecy worked. 

Black was going to propose that Potter investigate Peter’s innocence, but Potter cut him off. “What was it like,” Potter asked eagerly, “to grow up with Lily and James?”

Black flinched as if struck. “They abused me,” he said, only a little hesitant now on the ‘abuse’ word. Snape would have been proud.

Potter frowned, confused. Had he really not realized that there was a reason Black’s surname was Black and not Potter?

“Lily was afraid of my powerful magic.” The magic in question was coiled around his neck like a snake, lazily hissing. “They raised me as a child soldier. She taught me to be afraid of relaxation or pleasure, to torture myself to teach myself to stand up against torture. And when they were afraid that was not enough, they put a phoenix web on me.” Potter looked blank. “It’s a form of mind control in my universe. It forced me to have my brother as my highest priority. It’s Light magic, but only barely.” Black laughed without humor. “Only if you think a four-year-old can consent to being unable to care about anything other than his brother.”

Black could not bring himself to regret his treatment. This Potter, who was not abused, was not vates. And from pure selfishness-- just for the joy when he’d broken the unicorn’s web for the first time and saw them dance-- he would have put up with abuse a thousand times worse to be vates.

Potter’s voice was quiet. “I was abused too,” he said. 

“By who?” Black asked, making a mental note to check in his universe to make sure whomever-it-was didn’t have children.

“The Dursleys.”

“The Muggles?” Black asked, surprised. Petunia had been bitter, but it was hard enough to imagine her hurting Dudley, much less a wizard child.

“From what you said, Lily thought she was doing the right thing,” Potter said. “Aunt Petunia and Uncle Dursley… didn’t. They just thought I was annoying and a burden that they didn’t want to deal with, and whenever they could they got some use from me, and when they couldn’t, they ignored me and hoped I would go away.” Potter shuddered. “I’m shorter than you, you know.”

“Childhood malnutrition,” Black said. “Because Lily knew that if I was going to defend Connor I needed to have enough to eat.”

Black revised his unkind thoughts earlier about Potter. He had been lucky enough to have a mother who saw a use in him, and training that he could direct in a way he liked better. Given that he’d had neither, Potter had done quite well. And he seemed like he was listening to Black’s advice about paying attention to Hermione (who was sensible in every universe). 

“Where was our father in all this?” Potter asked.

“My father,” Black said sharply, “is Severus Snape, and he had no idea, or I’m sure he would have intervened. He did as soon as he knew.”

“Snape?” Potter said, seemingly puzzled at the obvious fondness in Black’s voice.

Black put a few puzzle pieces together. Potter was a Gryffindor, there was no Connor for Snape’s unreasoning hatred of Potters to be directed at-- “What happened to Snape in your universe?”

“He was a Death Eater,” Potter said, “until he knew that Voldemort was going to kill my mother, whom he loved. He tried desperately to save her.”

Black visualized the Muggle who gave birth to him, and then visualized Snape. It felt as though he was informed that in an alternate universe Hagrid was a hippogriff. His father? And Lily?

“After she died, he devoted himself to Dumbledore’s service in her memory,” Potter said. “He died to save me.”

“Was he bitter, absolutely vicious, incapable of expressing any positive emotion except maybe superiority, and pointlessly cruel to his students, particularly Neville Longbottom?” Black asked. 

“Well, I don’t like to speak ill of the dead--” Potter began.

“Oh,” Black said, and mourned this strange Snape from another world, consumed by self-loathing and loathing of everyone else, without a son to save and be saved by, his potential to be a good man forever unfulfilled. 

He wondered how many of the people he had known were like this strange other Snape, how many of them he would meet if he waited in this bar between the worlds: Dumbledores who loved their Grindelwalds and, defying Falco, became vates for his sake; Erasmus Junipers with a friend who cautioned them not to confuse Light and goodness; Indigenia Yaxleys with, at the end, someone they cared about more than pitiless honor. Perhaps if he waited here long enough he would find another Harry, with messy black hair and a lightning-bolt scar, and no Draco and Snape as he had had, or Ron and Hermione as Potter had had-- a Harry who ruled a world as full of blood and fear as any Voldemort had dreamed.

It was cruel, this multiverse.

But as vates, his job was to make it a little less cruel. He bowed his head and said the Light pureblood words of farewell to Potter, who did not seem to recognize them, and returned to work.

**Author's Note:**

> holy shit this is the most niche fanfic I've ever written
> 
> I salute both of the people who want to read this


End file.
